The only laboratory activities I have witnessed have been AP Chemistry labs. For these labs my teacher sets them loose to work on Flinn Science Kits. I have only seen what the students do on the day of the laboratory so I do not know how my teacher prefaces the labs or if there is much in the way of a hook or introduction. The labs are broken down into a pre-lab section and a lab section. In general the pre-lab section involves finding the concentrations of standards while practicing a technique used in the lab (an example of this is for the acid-base titrations the students confirmed the concentration of sodium hydroxide by performing the titrations. This allowed students to practice pipetting and buretting before starting their labs.
The actual lab typically asks the students to use the new laboratory technique in order to answer a question. For the acid-base titrations the question was, "how acidic is apple/orange/pineapple juice?" After performing the pre-lab activity, my teacher has students read through the lab, write up a procedure, and carry out the investigation. Groups seem to be already established and chosen by the students.
I believe that the extremely hands off approach is designed to approach an inquiry/self-reliant lab experience. I hesitate to say much about laboratory set up as I have not seen the day before and don't know how the labs are introduced, but I get the feeling that the answer to the question, "why do we care?" is not fully established for many of the students. I think that breaking the lab into two class periods so that the pre-lab portion can be completed by the students and they can write up the lab procedure they plan on using at home and using that procedure as an entrance ticket, would make it a more useful experience. I think that the hands off approach is great for lab techniques but guiding students in the process of performing experiments and investigations is important.
In my future class, I want labs to be a place where students not only reinforce DCI's but also get a better understanding of how and why science is done. I think that presenting labs/investigations in authentic ways will do a better job of teaching students how to explore questions and how to find answers. It will also help students understand where the theories and knowledge they are learning originate from. I also would hope that by making it more of a process for them it will
The actual lab typically asks the students to use the new laboratory technique in order to answer a question. For the acid-base titrations the question was, "how acidic is apple/orange/pineapple juice?" After performing the pre-lab activity, my teacher has students read through the lab, write up a procedure, and carry out the investigation. Groups seem to be already established and chosen by the students.
I believe that the extremely hands off approach is designed to approach an inquiry/self-reliant lab experience. I hesitate to say much about laboratory set up as I have not seen the day before and don't know how the labs are introduced, but I get the feeling that the answer to the question, "why do we care?" is not fully established for many of the students. I think that breaking the lab into two class periods so that the pre-lab portion can be completed by the students and they can write up the lab procedure they plan on using at home and using that procedure as an entrance ticket, would make it a more useful experience. I think that the hands off approach is great for lab techniques but guiding students in the process of performing experiments and investigations is important.
In my future class, I want labs to be a place where students not only reinforce DCI's but also get a better understanding of how and why science is done. I think that presenting labs/investigations in authentic ways will do a better job of teaching students how to explore questions and how to find answers. It will also help students understand where the theories and knowledge they are learning originate from. I also would hope that by making it more of a process for them it will